Department of Surgery, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2018 Dec 3;13(12):e0208405. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208405. eCollection 2018.
Virtual reality (VR) has shown to be an effective distraction method in health care. However, questions remain regarding individual and VR-related factors that may modulate the effect of VR.
To explore the effect of VR distraction on tactile perception thresholds in healthy volunteers, in relation to personal characteristics and interactivity of VR applications.
A randomized three way cross-over study was conducted to investigate the effects of active and passive VR applications in 50 healthy participants. Main outcome measures were monofilament detection thresholds (MDT) and electrical detection thresholds (EDT). Personal characteristics (e.g. age, gender, susceptibility for immersion) and immersion in the VR conditions were analyzed for their effect on VR induced threshold differences.
The use of VR caused a significant increase in both MDT and EDT compared to the control condition (MDT: F (2, 76) = 20.174, p < 0.001; EDT F (2, 76) = 6.907, p = 0.002). Furthermore, a significant difference in favour of active VR compared to passive VR was found in MDT (p = 0.012), but not in EDT. No significant gender effect was found. There was a significant positive correlation between age and active VR distraction (r = 0.333, p = 0.018). Immersion in the VR world was positively correlated with the effect of VR, whereas visualization and daydreaming were negatively correlated with VR effects.
VR increased tactile perception thresholds, with active VR having the largest effect. Results indicate that the efficacy of VR may increase with increasing age. Gender did not affect VR susceptibility.
虚拟现实（VR）已被证明是一种有效的医疗分散注意力的方法。然而，关于个体和 VR 相关因素可能调节 VR 效果的问题仍然存在。
探讨 VR 分散注意力对健康志愿者触觉感知阈值的影响，以及与个人特征和 VR 应用的交互性有关。
进行了一项随机三向交叉研究，以调查 50 名健康参与者中主动和被动 VR 应用的效果。主要观察指标为单丝检测阈值（MDT）和电检测阈值（EDT）。分析个人特征（如年龄、性别、沉浸倾向）和 VR 条件下的沉浸感对 VR 引起的阈值差异的影响。
与对照条件相比，使用 VR 会导致 MDT 和 EDT 显著增加（MDT：F（2，76）=20.174，p<0.001；EDT F（2，76）=6.907，p=0.002）。此外，在 MDT 中发现主动 VR 明显优于被动 VR（p=0.012），但在 EDT 中没有发现明显差异。未发现明显的性别效应。年龄与主动 VR 分散注意力呈显著正相关（r=0.333，p=0.018）。在 VR 世界中的沉浸感与 VR 的效果呈正相关，而可视化和白日梦与 VR 效果呈负相关。
VR 增加了触觉感知阈值，其中主动 VR 的效果最大。结果表明，VR 的功效可能随着年龄的增长而增加。性别对 VR 易感性没有影响。
